


Destroyer

by vanishingact



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Just Like One Reference To It), F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Gabriel Being Gabriel, Historical, Non-Explicit Sex, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Trickster Gabriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:44:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3314429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanishingact/pseuds/vanishingact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York, 1959. Gabriel, well entrenched in his guise as Loki, first makes the acquaintance of Kali. She matches him deed for deed and snark for snark as he wines and dines the deeply unimpressed goddess of destruction. Drawn to her power and self-assurance, Gabriel finds himself head over heels not only for her but for what he wishes she could offer him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destroyer

            New York sidewalks reek of stories.

            Every stroll he takes here hits him like a headlong city squall of soggy newsprint, chic perfume, gin, and self-importance. Taillights streak past like lifeblood in clogged urban arteries. The filmy light of five-o-clock filters through a mist of rain, making for a whispery, tea-stained afternoon, punctuated by the wet snap of flags on storefronts. People don’t talk so much when it rains. They hurry, eyes downcast, brains on autopilot. Makes it easier to eavesdrop on their deepest truths.

            Gabriel (undercover archangel and most excellent god of mischief, at your service) spins an expensive, cork-handled umbrella over his shoulder as he weaves past all the funny little humans of the five boroughs. His crisp gray suit and Italian shoes lend him a respectable air, but his darting, greedy eyes might unnerve the more sensitive souls he encounters. He smacks away at a wad of bubblegum—Bazooka Joe, to be exact—and windowshops the latest spring styles with a certain dry amusement.

            His prey stops and hails a taxi.

            How delightful! He does the same and earns the chance to use the line “Quick! Follow that cab!” in the process.

            Gabriel observes his victim making a bank deposit, picking up his dry cleaning, and stiffing the taxi driver on his tip. Hopping out of the car to follow him down a smart, well-lit street packed with brownstones, Gabriel waits patiently until the man is fumbling with his keys, garment bag and umbrella tucked precariously in one arm.

            “Arthur Proudfoot, I believe?” Gabriel says, leaning against the wrought iron fence by the dour brownstone’s front stoop.

            “Who’s asking?” the man grunts, hand on the doorknob.

            “A concerned citizen,” Gabriel simpers up at him.

            “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any. Now scram.” He shimmies the key again, cursing to himself. The door doesn’t budge. If he notices that all the lights in the house have winked out, he doesn’t show it.

            “Concerned about your recent actions at Ekert & Silverman, Mr. Proudfoot,” Gabriel clarifies, baring his teeth.

            “Now what the hell do you know about that?” Proudfoot spits, rounding on him in earnest. The loose skin of his neck bobs up and down in a tremor of fear and disgust.

            “What the hell _don’t_ I know would be the more pertinent question. Mostly I know about the embezzlement. The absolutely _outrageous_ embezzlement.”

            Proudfoot’s mouth falls open. His sallow face has flushed an alarming shade of burgundy. “Now—now, what’s the meaning of this? Who are you? Are you offering to _blackmail_ me? Are you _threatening_ me, you candyass little fink—”

            “Ooh, _touchy_.” Gabriel twirls his umbrella about like Gene Kelly in _Singing in the Rain_. “I would never dream of threatening you, Mr. Proudfoot. You see: I don’t need to.”

            And with that, Gabriel flicks his fingers and watches this hoarding, cheating Scrooge shrink and shrink out of his suit, screeching all the way. His wide, doughy face bristles with dark stripes as he falls to all fours in the heap of his clothes. Yowling and hissing, the ponderously round tomcat shoots down the steps, trailing a pair of white briefs round its back legs.

            “Fat cat—get it, _fat cat_? Oh, I crack myself up,” Gabriel wheezes with laughter. “Now scram,” he adds with a flare of poetic justice, shooing the wild-eyed animal. It wouldn’t be cooking the books or fondling its secretary’s shivering thighs again anytime soon.

           

            It’s stopped raining and Gabriel zips over to Central Park to glue a few lovers’ lips together (temporarily _, geez_ ), but their adorable flailing gets old fast. He sifts through the thinning herd of humanity looking for a real piece of work to slap with the ol’ black magic. A hotshot advertising exec. A crooked cop. Vice President Richard Nixon. Anyone will do, really.

            And that’s when a woman trailing an aura of darkest, seasoned infamy snicks past him on emerald green pumps, the mink around her shoulders redolent with jasmine and clove.

            Gabriel locks onto her like a scent hound, captivated by the raw, bloodthirsty power rolling off her. She’s _old_. Older than the callow little sun hanging in this 20 th century sky, older than _light_. Why, she’s as old as he is, and that’s saying something. All other potential targets forgotten, he tails her in dramatic private eye fashion.

            Some jackass hood with a cheap leather jacket and too much hair pomade knocks shoulders with this simmering primordial entity and Gabriel sees quite clearly he’s snapped the white diamond bracelet off her wrist. He’s bowing and scraping in abject apology, calling her _ma’am_ but also wondering in his head what some sorta colored lady is doing with such swell jewels. She smiles at him with red, red lips, calls him a polite young man, and turns to leave. The smirk falls right off the kid’s pale face as he cries out, tossing the bracelet onto the ground like a hot potato. A slithering purple burn marks his palm, blistering and bursting.

            “Oh, poor lamb,” the woman coos, bending to retrieve the little chain and sauntering on.

            That’s it. Gabriel’s asking this chick to dinner. Provided she eats something other than human entrails, that is.

            “Pardon me, but I must compliment you on your absolutely _sublime_ ruthlessness,” Gabriel croons, sidling up to her elbow.

            “He’s lucky I’m keeping a low profile or I would have set him on fire,” she replies, gaze fixed ahead. “Why are you following me?”

            “Because you’re blowing away the rest of this fancy island like a damn A-bomb, darling. You stand out to those with eyes to see. What _are_ you?”

            “Kali. I am Kali,” she answers matter-of-factly.

            “That’s… well, that’s just something, isn’t it?” Gabriel trips over his tongue. “Loki, if it please you.”

            _“Loki?”_ she repeats, heavily lashed eyes narrowing. She ducks out of the flow of foot traffic into the shelter of a newsstand’s awning and looks him over. “Asgard’s _court jester?_ No, it does not please me.”

            “I’m much more than _that_ ,” Gabriel protests. “I am the god of lies, the god of strife! I am conflict itself! Say, shouldn’t you be in India?”

            “What fresh hypocrisy is this?” she counters. “You telling me to ‘go home, immigrant’? By that token, shouldn’t you be in _Sweden_ , white boy?”

            “Oh-ho! Well, if this isn’t just a regular _West Side Story_!” Gabriel declares, rocking back on his heels. “Please tell me we’re about to start snapping and dancefighting.”

            “You are ridiculous,” Kali says with a toss of her immaculately coifed hair.

            “I know, it’s kind of my trademark. How’d you like to tell me how ridiculous I am over steak and martinis?”

            “I don’t eat steak.”

            “Right-o! Only the smoking hearts of your enemies, eh?” He makes as if to elbow her suggestively but thinks better of it.

            She rolls her eyes and stalks away.

            “Dessert then?” he proposes, skipping after her. “Ice cream and champagne? _Crème brûlée_ and amaretto?”

            She stops by a trickling fountain full of old green pennies, pulls a compact from her handbag, and touches up her lipstick as casually as if she’s home in front of the vanity. “I do like _crème brûlée_ ,” she says with a shrug.

            “Wonderful,” Gabriel gushes. “I know just the joint.”

 

            They order it _flambé_ , and when the shallow ramekins are served with a halo of cobalt flame still rippling over the surface, Kali lifts a flickering spoonful to her mouth and swallows it straight down.

            “That’s some trick, lady,” the pimply young waiter observes, eyes wide.

            “I know,” she agrees, taking a sip of her liqueur.

            They’re sitting in a private corner booth—all oxblood leather upholstery and starched white tablecloths. A thick blue haze of cigarette smoke hangs in the air and the other patrons seem a million miles away, mere shadows of people compared to the goddess sitting across from Gabriel.

            “So. Business or pleasure here in the Big Apple?” he asks, digging into his own bubbling, broiled confection.

            “Pleasure,” she answers simply.

            “Likewise.” He runs the toe of his shoe up her sheer, stockinged calf.

            She pretends not to notice and goes on eating. Gabriel realizes she’s going to make him work for every word, every interaction. But someone like her wouldn’t speak to him at all if she didn’t want to, and that gives him hope.

            “How long have you been here?”

            “Two years,” she replies. “But it doesn’t much matter whether I’m here or on the moon, to be honest.”

            “What is it that you _do?_ ” he wonders, clinking the ice around in his glass.

            “Nothing. And everything. I keep time turning. I destroy what needs to be destroyed and raise up what needs to be raised up.”

            “How _mystical_. I play ironic and often fatal pranks on people.”

            She raises her eyebrows as though he’s just admitted his godly duties consist of pulling live lobsters from his ears. “And what, exactly, does that achieve?”

            “It makes me laugh. That’s worth a thousand so-called ‘greater’ achievements.”

            Kali quirks her lips and twirls a spoon between two long, pretty fingers. “You must be very miserable.”

            “What?” Gabriel huffs, rearing back in his seat. “Weren’t you listening? I'm… I'm the exact opposite of miserable.”

            “The most bitter and demoralized creatures often laugh hardest,” Kali goes on, words weighted down with perfect certainty. “Comedians, as a rule, have dark spirits. Inferiority complexes. They make light of things because if they ever admitted the things were heavy, they’d be crushed.”

            Gabriel doesn’t feel so much like dessert anymore. “Wow,” he gulps, face hot with disgrace. “Guess they don’t call you ‘the Destroyer’ for nothing.”

            Her look softens but she does not apologize. “Still. You _are_ funny, Loki. I like your style. It’s altogether different from the other deities’. Perhaps, after this, I’ll let you take me dancing. I haven’t danced in a long time.”

 

            When they stumble out of the dance hall at midnight, bright with sweat and booze, ears ringing, Kali doesn’t even question the existence of the late model yellow Thunderbird waiting at the curb. Shaking off the club’s effects in a heartbeat, Gabriel hurtles over the closed driver’s side door like a giddy teenager. Kali slides in more decorously and they speed through the streets with the top down and the radio up. It’s really too cold for a cruise in a convertible, but that means very little to either of them. They drag-race a Cadillac Eldorado with fins the size of Texas and win. They fly over the Brooklyn Bridge and back again, the swift saltwater glitter of the East River surging by below.

            “Where are we going?” Kali shouts over the music, the wind, the traffic.

            “Just waiting for you to ask,” Gabriel smiles. “Where do you wanna go?”

            “How about a hotel?” she suggests, throwing her head back on the seat and looking up at the blur of suspension cables and lights above.

            “You got it.” Gabriel’s heart jumps as the car skids to a halt outside a swanky establishment that was probably a mile away two seconds ago. He tosses the Thunderbird’s keys to the waiting valet and takes Kali’s arm as they enter the lobby.

            “Nice to see you again, Mr. Lyesmith,” the concierge sings out. Gabriel punches the elevator button without stopping at the reception desk, and the concierge doesn’t make a single move to challenge it.

            As the doors clunk closed behind them and it’s just the two of them in the lacquered cherry and frosted glass confines of the elevator, Kali snags his tie and kisses him as if she’s aiming to eat him whole. She’s strong. She pushes him against the faintly vibrating wall, and Gabriel lets her think he couldn’t prevent it if he chose. Kali is greater than Loki by far, after all, but not greater than Gabriel. Returning the kiss, he feels a hand on his tie, a hand on his hip, and two hands twisting in his hair. Ancient, brassy smoke and the thick punch of blood meet his nose as if from some other dimension. His eyes pop open, but she’s backing away from him with a throaty giggle, licking her lips, not a hair out of place much less a couple of limbs.

            “That seems useful,” he observes breathlessly as the elevator dings their arrival on the seventh floor.

            The dim, spacious suite boasts ritzy chaise lounges, a dripping ice bucket of wine, and myriad other luxuries, but it’s the bed that draws them in with the gravity of a collapsing star. Kali’s hot to trot, and Gabriel’s not wasting any time. He’s unzipping her deep green houndstooth dress with slightly shaky hands and she’s ripping the pins from her hair. Pressing against him in her stiff, lacy brassiere and thigh-high nylons, she shoves him down on the bed and sits astride him.

            He’s relieved she’s taking charge. The possibility of offending her might distract him too much otherwise. Gabriel knows he’s grown lazy and selfish in his bedroom skills over the last few hundred years, merely conjuring mindless virtual partners to warm his bed more often than not. It soothes the itch but does him no favors socially. This is different. Kali’s more real than anything he’s touched in quite awhile, and he cares just a little too much what she thinks of him.

            “You are overdressed for this occasion, Mr. _Lyesmith_ ,” she hisses into his ear, fisting her long-nailed fingers in his rumpled shirt.

            “I wholeheartedly agree, I—damn, girl!”

            The shirt is burning away like old parchment, his tie curling up under his chin in a puff of ash, his salt-and-pepper jacket falling away into molten orange embers. It hurts just a little on his vessel’s chest, but Kali knows he can take it.

            Everything goes up like phoenix flame around them and it’s just skin on skin from there on out.

            Kali’s lips seem to glow red in the small hours of the night and her tongue is too red too, but Gabriel doesn’t mind. And maybe it’s just the eerie light reflected from the street outside, but sometimes a dusty blue sheen washes over her brown flesh just as the sharp resinous scent of acacia cinders wafts up from nowhere. She’s death, but she’s so alive, and Gabriel loves it.

            “Show me what you keep inside this plain mortal body,” she coaxes at one point, moaning prettily.

            And Gabriel wishes more than anything that he could. Wishes he could whip out his trueform in that moment and give her his hooded and veiled jackal’s face, his chained shoulders, his bony golden hands that float free of his arms, his _wings_ the size of Manhattan—

            But he can’t do that. So he shows her Loki instead. Loki the strange and statuesque Æsir, Loki the horned frost giant.

            She laughs with delight and eats it right up, pushing him harder and faster, flickering in and out of time and space.

 

            Later, as the bed cools and the air stops crackling, as they mumble across the tangle of sheets in Sanskrit and Old Gutnish, Icelandic and Bengali, Gabriel wonders if maybe Kali’s got it right.

            Maybe she _will_ end the world. Maybe his spoiled, cocky brothers won’t get the satisfaction of unmaking creation. Maybe Heaven and Hell have been more blind than he ever realized, with Michael and Lucifer moving around as mere pieces in a much larger game of chess. Knights or Rooks, perhaps, but not Queens. The Queen wields the most power, takes the trickiest paths. How _gratifying_ would it be if their precious Apocalypse were smashed to smithereens like a child’s sandcastle by this wonderful, classy, deadly woman? He would laugh harder than ever, even as she burned him too. He would welcome destruction if it came at her hands.

            Gabriel rests his cheek on her soft shoulder, kissing the pulse in her throat.

            He wishes it could be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, I feel better now that I've exorcised this particular brain demon. I couldn't get this story off my mind until I finished it even though my WIP is also begging to be written. And I know it probably won't get a lot of love because this ship is more of a submarine, coasting under the radar of the fandom, but I like Kali and enjoyed exploring Gabe's psychology a little more.
> 
> (And, really, Gabriel and Kali probably met in deepest antiquity, but I liked writing about all the little details of this era.)
> 
> (P.S. Yeah, Loki/Low Key "Lyesmith" is a shout-out to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.)
> 
> 2/15/15 Note: HOLY SHIT, I JUST REALIZED WHILE RE-WATCHING 5.21 THAT DEATH DRIVES A 1959 CADILLAC ELDORADO. THAT'S HIS PALE HORSE. I just randomly picked it after a bit of research because I wanted something from that year that I could describe as having "fins the size of Texas." New headcanon for this story: Gabriel and Kali were drag-racing Death.


End file.
